Goldfish and Tea
by Bo Balder
The White Lady will receive us in the honeymoon suite. The elevator groans and stutters getting us up. I'm afraid it's going to fail and crash, and I can't tell Dad because I know he won't listen to me anyway. Or maybe we both kind of want that to happen and I don't want to see it in his eyes.
The room is large and dim. Sand blowing up from the deserted beach rattles against the shutters like a steel brush, even though this is the fortieth floor. A funny smell, like old mushrooms, floats in the air.
I hold on tight to Dad's hand as he pulls me to the empty cushions around the low table. We're late. Everyone else is already seated. Strangers with patched clothes and empty eyes. Maybe that's how we look to them, as well.
My eyes slowly adjust to the lack of light. The Lady kneels at the head of the table. She's heavily shrouded in colorless robes, barely discernible against the dun walls and faded hangings. So far, the whole summer has been like that, everything hot, dusty, beige, all color leached out of the world. Even here, on the Atlantic coast, the drought was visible in the yellowed lawns and shriveled trees when we drove up.
Dad has been chasing enlightenment, or something, since Mom died. A month after her death, he sold our house, threw our stuff away, including pictures, and took me out of 6th grade. Off we went in an old electrified Airstream. What can I do but tag along? I'm only eleven. Hidden in my back pocket is one last photo of Mom, softening into wrinkledom day by day.
This tea ceremony is just going to be another dull moment in the thousand rituals Dad wants to experience. We've bathed, fasted, meditated, whipped ourselves, purged, and whirled across America. So far none of it has brought him enlightenment, as far as I can tell. If that's what he needs. He never asks what I need. Or even talks about Mom.
I just hang on. Without Mom, and without school, my friends, my books; nothing's fun, and everything's terrible. Boring travels in the colorless land, I call it in my head as I write in my pretend journal at night. Dad refuses to buy me a journal and a pen, saying we must divest ourselves of our worldly goods and desires.
I eye the room. A vase of desiccated flowers, probably once pink, now beige. The faded and patched jeans of our fellow travelers, who I imagine to be just like Dad. Enlightenment seekers who would travel to India if they could, but have only managed this hotel room. I'm the only child. Only my father's sweaty hand around mine makes it possible for me to stay and sit still. The others converse in awed whispers, hard to distinguish from the hissing of the wind outside.
The White Lady's dun robes fall back, revealing more colorless drapes. Her face remains hidden in a deep hood, but bone-pale hands slip out, made paler by black henna snaking around her long thin fingers. She lifts a teapot and pours steaming tea into a cup.
Through the steam, the teapot shines a sharp, minty green, the ceramics so smooth and rounded and pristine it seemed freshly created right this minute.
